Auteur/autrice : Caroline B.-Laurens

There’s a Child in There! A Family Breaks an 800-Year-Old Coffin in a Failed Museum Photo Op

A couple wanted a picture of their child inside an ancient sarcophagus. That’s when things went wrong.

On a recent visit to Prittlewell Priory Museum in Southend, Essex, a couple placed a child over an exhibit barrier and inside an ancient sandstone coffin in the hopes of snapping a morbid photo. As a result, part of the sarcophagus—which was already in three pieces—fell to the floor, and a chunk of it broke off, according to the BBC.

The family fled the scene without reporting the damage but were caught on the museum’s security camera.

Conservator Claire Reed, who has been charged with restoring the coffin, said the incident was “upsetting” for the museum staff who “strive to protect Southend’s heritage for the benefit of our visitors.”

In a statement, Ann Holland, Southend’s executive councillor for culture, said: “The museum conservator is currently assessing the damage to the coffin and will carry out the repair using materials and techniques suited to the object.” She added that the area around the coffin would be cordoned off but that the affected part of the museum would re-open “as soon as possible.”

The incident follows a spate of visitor mishaps at museums in recent years. In 2014, a visitor to London’s Tate Modern spotted a child lying on a Donald Judd “Stack” sculpture. In February of this year, a selfie-taker smashed a Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture at Washington, DC’s Hirshhorn Museum. In July, a woman damaged $200,000 worth of art while taking a selfie at a Simon Birch exhibition in Los Angeles. And just last week, at the Center of Fine Arts in Brussels, a man stepped into an Yves Klein installation—a bin filled with International Klein Blue-colored sand—leaving a trail of blue footprints throughout the museum.

Source : A Family Breaks an 800-Year-Old Coffin in a Failed Museum Photo Op

Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test | artnet News

Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test

If Johannes Vermeer used a camera obscura, a new book may have figured out how he did it.

Sarah Cascone,

Detail from Jan Vermeer’s Young Woman With A Pearl Necklace, (1662-1665). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Leaving behind just 36 exquisite, immaculately lit paintings, Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer has captivated art lovers for generations. Now, author Jane Jelley may have uncovered the artist’s secrets. In her new book, Traces of Vermeer, Jelley tests long-held suspicions that Vermeer actually traced his compositions using a camera obscura—by demonstrating just how such a technique could have been executed.

For over a century, art historians have wondered if Vermeer could have been working with the aid of a camera obscura, a pinhole device that uses a lens to project an inverted view of a subject into a darkened space. And if so, how did the artist convert an upside-down light projection into a fixed painting?

Precious little is known about the Dutch Golden Age master, aside from his birthplace in Delft. So there is no historical evidence supporting such theories. All we have are the paintings and what can be inferred from their appearance.

Jane Jelley, Traces of Vermeer (2017), cover. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jane Jelley, Traces of Vermeer (2017), cover. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jelley, a painter, has approached the mystery from the point of view of an artist, doing her best to replicate Vermeer’s work from the canvas up, based on X-ray observations.

Beneath the surface, there aren’t underdrawings on Vermeer’s canvases, and there are no signs that he made corrections to his layouts as he worked. Instead, he created a shadowy image outlining the scene before painting. These unusual underpaintings served as a foundation for his luminous works.

Using a camera obscura, Jelley attempted to come up with the same underlayer through a rudimentary monoprint process. She projected images of various Vermeer works through the lens, then traced each image in dark paint on a sheet of transparent oiled paper. She then pressed the painted paper—essentially an image negative—down on canvas, producing a rough outline of each scene. The results appear remarkably similar to the underpaintings of the Vermeer works.

Jane Jelley devised a mean of making prints from a tracing made using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Jane Jelley devised a means of making prints from a tracing made using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

In reimagining Vermeer’s process, Jelley made certain to use a method the artist could have employed in his era. “The materials used in the studio experiments were all available in Vermeer’s time. Great care was taken to prepare the surface of the canvas in a way he would have recognized; and pigments were ground by hand into cold pressed linseed oil,” Jelley wrote on her website, describing the process. “This experiment took a year to complete not only because grounds had to be dry and prepared ready to receive a print, but also because it took time to refine a successful technique.”

If Vermeer really did use this method, it would go a long way to explaining his distorted proportions and off-center compositions. It’s also easy not to have to adjust your perspective when you’ve traced it all in one fell swoop.

L: Jane Jelley made this print based on Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). R: Jelley added color to the print, based on Vermeer's original. Images courtesy of Oxford University Press.

L: Jane Jelley made this print based on Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring using a camera obscura, as part of the research for her new book Traces of Vermeer (2017). R: Jelley added color to the print, based on Vermeer’s original. Images courtesy of Oxford University Press.

The first person to raise the possibility that Vermeer used a camera obscura was American artist Joseph Pennell, who in 1891 noticed that the man in the foreground of Officer and Laughing Girl was shown nearly twice as large as the girl he sat facing, in much the same way that such a scene might appear in a photograph.

In 2002, Philip Steadman further explored this theory in Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces. (It was a lecture by Steadman in 2007 that inspired Jelley to begin the research that led to Traces of Vermeer.)

Johannes Vermeer, Officer and Laughing Girl (c. 1655–60). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

Johannes Vermeer,
Officer and Laughing Girl (c. 1655–60). Courtesy of the Frick Collection, New York.

Artist David Hockney also famously made his case on the matter, with help with from physicist Charles Falco, in their 2001 book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. To further his point, Hockney made a number of portraits using the techniques he claimed were employed by the likes of Vermeer.

In her book, Jelley is quick to allay fears that Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura diminishes his genius. Rather, she says, it is an impressive innovation. “The image from the camera obscura is merely a projection. To capture and transfer this to canvas requires skill, judgment, and time; and its product can only ever be part of the process of making a painting,” she writes. “We can never know if Vermeer worked this way; but we should remember that this is not a mindless process, and not a shortcut to success.”

Source : Did Vermeer Trace His Golden Age Masterpieces? An Artist Puts the Theory to the Test | artnet News

5 Minutes with: A Sam Haskins photobook

 

5 minutes with… A photo book that rethought the female nude

Philippe Garner, Deputy Chairman of Photographs, discusses Sam Haskins’ maquette for Cowboy Kate & Other Stories — a ‘revolutionary’ book of black-and-white images from 1964

‘One of the most interesting lots in our 20 May Photographs sale is an original maquette for the 1964 book Cowboy Kate & Other Stories — a landmark project by photographer Sam Haskins,’ says Philippe Garner, Christie’s Deputy Chairman of Photographs…

Source : 5 Minutes with: A Sam Haskins photobook

Frank Lloyd Wright | HOW TO SEE Rosenwald School with Mabel Wilson

In the 1920s, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a school for the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization which built over 5,000 schools for African American students who, under Jim Crow laws, were required to pay for their own educational facilities despite paying taxes. Mabel Wilson explores Wright’s plans for the Rosenwald School as well as the architect’s interest in progressive education reform throughout his career.

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Artsy.net

Voici un site sur lequel les amoureux de l’art et les collectionneurs trouveront des informations sur leurs artistes favoris, mais pourront également faire des découvertes par sérendipité et association d’images.

Ce site se présente à première vue comme un site commercial mais il contient des petites pépites, en particulier ce qui me tient particulièrement à cœur, leur section “Education“. Les pages des artistes (modernes et contemporains) sont assez bien conçues, avec un dernier onglet “Related Artists” qui permet de rebondir sur des artistes proches par leur travail ou leur concept.

Malheureusement pour les non-anglophones, le site est exclusivement en anglais.

Here is a site on which art lovers and collectors will find informations about their favourite artists, but will aslo make discoveries by serendipity and images associations.

This site opens at a first sight like a commercial site, but it contains nuggets, like the ‘Education‘ section, which is particularly important to me. Related artists pages (modern and contemporary) are well conceived, with the last tab ‘Related Artsits’ which allow to jump on near artists by work or concept.

Just too bad for not English-speakers that it is only in English.

Visit https://www.artsy.net/